Middusk:

a flicker of what the angels were humming. 

Lawns with trees across from me. The crosshatch 

of drainage systems visible above, although taking place below. 

And I am sorry, to be pregnant–to think no bird but shadow. 

The sweet puncture scent-of-it turns again, a question, 

then to the street run-off. My mother was 32, 

stretched like a rack in labor. Always I thought I felt 

the other way, the aversion became 

a kind of marshland. I could not stand in 

its moving. The hours made a difference, 

as old women often do. It was obvious that angels 

were the thing you’d speak to about this, 

asking–very polite–-about compensation.

Panting at lake gaston

After grief peaks, it pools again at the ankles. A dog 

by the firepit–they’ll sleep anywhere and wake 

to anything. I know about being alone in a room. 

I practice sitting, then I sit. 

But have you ever been bitten by a dog? Is it worse than a person’s 

tool marauding again at your gut? Whose eyes 

were wilder? I cannot admire 

the heart pried into ventages. Even an instrument 

will be played by the wind. Even wind has access to a body. 

The lake floor you learn, how you learn everything else, 

not by touch but through flinching and its repetitions.